Carrie Brownstein On Touch And Go’s Demise
Recently, indie-rock cornerstone Touch and Go Records announced it was effectively closing up shop. Carrie Brownstein wrote up a solid essay on her blog, Monitor Mix, about the sad news.
Brownstein points the finger at music websites as a big culprit. She makes some interesting points. I agree with everything she has to say. It should be noted that the two recently released Touch and Go albums leaked well in advance. You can't stop illegal downloading.
Then why are record stores thriving in the District?
Here's some of what Brownstein wrote:
"I read the news about Touch and Go today. I was sitting in a restaurant and I checked my phone and gasped; my friend actually asked what was wrong. Something is wrong. We are careening toward a paucity of experience and a paucity of means with which to evaluate music. I mean, can we really engage with art on a Web site and in a vacuum, without ever bothering to contextualize it or make it coherent with our lives or form a community around the work? If we never move beyond the ephemeral and facile nature of music Web sites — and let's not lie to ourselves, that's where it ends for a lot of us these days — then that makes us worse than blind consumers; it makes us dabblers. We have become musical tourists. And tourism is the laziest form of experience, because it is spoonfed and sold to us. Tourism cannot and should not replace the physical energy, the critical thinking and the tiresome but ultimately edifying road of adventure, and thus also of life.
As for places like MySpace, they're not the enemy, they're not anathema to art, and they're places I peruse frequently. I mean, MySpace is democratic and ceaselessly available, but it is ugly — and it's a crumb being treated like the whole wedding cake we can't stop gorging on. Are we no longer seekers of the real? Or do we only seek for ourselves without any sense that a tactile discovery is mutually beneficial? Being found is as splendid as the finding. Stumbling upon an MP3 or a blog or a Web site is only half the search. We seem to have forfeited our duties and become half-participants — and at the cost of the creators. But we have to realize, and the Touch and Go announcement is a reminder, that in order for there to be anything left in which to participate, we have to show up. We have to show up with not just our half-selves, our virtual selves, our broke-ass selves, but with our whole selves, and in the spirit of giving. Mock participation is more than just an absence of real engagement; it is a falsehood that has allowed us to justify our apathy. When, exactly, did we stop showing up? And how long until there's not much left worth showing up for?"
1:39 pm
I thought highly of Sleater-Kinney but Carrie's blog often annoys me, and don't get me started on her comments on that NPR 2008 year-in-review podcast. She comes across to me as pretentious and stuck in her little insular world when she's not reciting hippie generalities as she lives off the profits she made having her band open for Pearl Jam. Whining about mp3 blogs is so tiresome and cliched at this point, and it doesn't get us anywhere. Yea, yea not everyone is a passionate geek seeking out the true meaning behind the art, but is that really so new?... What has happened to Touch and Go is sad, but shouldn't she also be discussing that Merge is still selling more units (cds, downloads, vinyl) now than an indie was in the early '80s. Lets see some specifics from her regarding indie distribution, radio, marketing, online sales, etc. and not cliches about cake crumbs. C'mon, does she want to give up hearing songs on myspace and return to a time when a small handful of people bought singles that were written up in a small pressing fanzine? And doesn't she remember all the labels and distributors that also crashed and burned then? I heard Carrie praise predictable inie fave Bon Iver and snear at pop on that NPR podcast and I don't think she's in any position to lecture anyone on being a "seeker of the real."
9:06 pm
My theory is that most indie labels have a 20- to 25-year lifespan, max, no matter how seminal or important they are. It probably has to do with the life-cycle and attention span of the people involved (no matter how dedicated they are). The exceptions (Sub Pop? Matador?) end up getting money from somewhere else, or from a stroke of luck. Nothing spurs a rebirth better than an old-fashioned bankrolling. Dunno how much money Touch & Go made over the years, but I'd guess that it wasn't even close to the realm of "fuck you" money.
11:14 am
Man, that Carrie Brownstein is the worst writer I've run across in a good while. "We are careening toward a paucity of experience and a paucity of means with which to evaluate music. I mean, can we really engage with art on a Web site and in a vacuum, without ever bothering to contextualize it or make it coherent with our lives or form a community around the work?" I smell a liberal arts education gone terribly, terribly awry. Anyway, touch and go gave us Killdozer, so god bless them.
1:23 pm
Me thinks there are way too many indie labels releasing way too many mediocre bands/records. It's like the world is overflowing with over hyped crap, and many times, the good stuff gets lost in all the noise...
If labels aren't more selective instead of signing bands like crazy hoping to find the new "Nirvana", of course they're going to go under. Most indie labels don't seem to have much of an identity anymore, no community, they behave just like the majors, signing bands based on hype or number of myspace hits a band gets.
Touch and Go used to have a certain vibe and attitude if you got one of their releases you knew you were in for something interesting and unique (Butthole Surfers, Scratch Acid/Jesus Lizard, Big Black/Shellac, Killdozer)... but in the past decades, that has not been the case.
4:58 pm
They did release Yeah Yeah Yeahs and TV on the Radio before those groups went to other labels so dismissing their output of the past few decades is a bit subjective